Meet Hannah

Meet Hannah

I hit puberty at the peak of the blogging era.

I turned 12 in 2006, when Xanga was all the rage (you guys remember Xanga?), and I started my own public, world-wide-internet blog when I was 15. FIFTEEN. No 15 year old should write anywhere publicly. Thankfully, blogs have a delete button and many of those posts are (to my relief) lost forever in the internet abyss.

I wrote all my thoughts and feelings on youth group worship (yet another mark of my Evangelical Street Cred™), waiting for "The One", wanderlust, having a brother, processing grief, body image, and in later years, stumbling into feminism. I published my breakups; I announced my college acceptance and major in a blog post. Blogging was a record of me coming of age in real time. (Maybe I could be the inspiration for a Boyhood sequel.)

In August 2013, I moved from my busy hometown in the northwestern Chicago suburbs to a tiny Christian liberal arts school called Taylor University in rural Indiana. The first week of school, my roommate informed me that there was this guy named Logan who bought her coffee and fixed her computer, and he seemed great but she just wanted to be friends. I told her he seemed like a nice guy, and she shouldn't lead him on because he deserved better. Thankfully, he was willing to settle for me as second choice, and in December 2017 we got married.

I love marriage. I love being married to Logan. He is smart and kind and creative and every good and gracious thing. Sometimes I write here about love and marriage and how I'm learning to do those things honestly and with tenderness. Other times I'm just trying to get ok with the fact that he doesn't like The Office.

These days, Logan and I and our cat Jose (lovingly referred to as "little ho") make our home in a little apartment in Waco, Texas. In August 2017 I started a dual Master's/Ph.D. program in Sociology at Baylor University, which means I spend a lot of time reading about how we're all racist and American Christianity is devolving into anti-intellectual religious nationalism and having existential crises about whether it's possible to be religious and white and not an asshole, and seeking comfort by snuggling my cat, only to remember that he's a kitten and he hates snuggling, so after chasing him around for a while I settle with coercing Logan into giving me a back rub. (They're lucky to have me.)

I write a lot here about politics and race. I believe that we all have a personal responsibility to act justly, and writing in this space about justice is a piece of that responsibility for me.

I also write about growing up in 2000s Christian Evangelical culture. It started as the pure delight of listening to the podcast Good Christian Fun, and then starting a Twitter thread about missing a Superchick concert in eighth grade, and then it expanded into reflections on the lasting effects of evangelical pop culture on my adult cultural tastes and the weird challenges of being a homeschooled evangelical trying to function as an adult in a world of secular pop culture references.

I used to write a lot about my faith, and I used to write a lot about theology. You may have noticed that I'm much quieter about those things now. These days, I keep my faith closer to my heart. As the public face of Christianity in America becomes more politically partisan and more of an embarrassment to my personal faith, and I traverse beyond the realms of evangelical orthodoxy, the more I prefer to keep my faith journey off the internet and in real-life conversations. If you're truly curious, you can always ask.

If you've followed me on Twitter for even a day, you know I'm obsessed with the Enneagram. I know it's trendy right now. I know you're rolling your eyes. I don't care. Learning about the Enneagram has changed my life and my relationships and I am endlessly grateful that it is so much more than a personality test. (For the curious: I'm a One.)

When I’m not writing here (which, unfortunately, is most of the time), you can find me most frequently on Twitter or Instagram, or working on my creative collaboration with Logan, Foodology Podcast.

Have I mentioned that I'm glad you're here? I am so glad you're here. Thank you for being a part of my community. May there be lots of laughing and questioning together in our future.

RT @RheaButcher: I’m joining whatever political party those kids in Florida just started